Bardens Bar

Reviews

• I love the place

  Well, I love the place.The nights they have on are ace, I've seen some excellent bands there and the crowd are pretty friendly.I quite like the scruffy aspect to the place, I feel quite at home.Not the best place on earth for live music, but it certainly works as a club venue.

  Prosthetic_eye
  Review Date: 02/11/2008 Report review
• Gonna sort of reserve judgement a bit...but!

  I've only been here once- to play a gig, which was VERY well advertised, but exteremely sparsely attended.Now, it's not that my pride was hurt. I've played to one man and his dog before, and I'm sure I will again, but the fact is- I walked up and down Kingsland Road LOOKING for the venue, and couldn't find it, even though I'd been past before and pretty much knew where it was!The actual room itself, I have no problem with. It's a decent size, the stage is in a bit of a funny place, admittedly, but the real problem is being pretty much invisible unless you know it's there!I think the bar needs to either get serious, and start putting on exclusively bigger acts, who will draw a real crowd without much effort, or make sure they have some sort of frontage!

  Mgeek
  Review Date: 03/09/2008 Report review
• Dalston's premier burlesque hotspot?

  Somehow the words "Dalston" and "burlesque hotspot" seem rather incongruous. However, the venue being the dive it is, actually lends itself quite remarkably to hosting a certain sleasy Hackneyesque flavour of saucy theatrics. Populated with lesbo-nazi "Stokey" types and brothel-creepered geriatrics it's neither the friendliest nor sexiest of scenes, but yuh pays yer money and yuh takes yer chances. The urination chamber is a perpetually flooded cess pool and a constant stream of powdery nosed dudes in red shirts and black hats seems to eminate from the tiny "changing room" at the back. In an alcohol fueled stupor one might wrangle a kind of twisted enjoyment out of the typical night's proceedings here, but I would strongly advise a hot medicated bath when you get home.

  Papayoyo
  Review Date: 12/08/2008 Report review
• Crap venue for bands

  Barden's Boudoir is a fucking shit venue. I've been there a couple of times, I've been to other gigs in my life, I know a shit venue.The sound is atrocious, its unforgivable. There have been many great bands playing there, I've seen them before, I've heard them before, but at Barden's they sound shit. I've seen shows there with different sound engineers and they all sound crap.Maybe the place is cursed and bands, who are usually great, they play there and their instruments go out of tune, they lose their voices and forget the words, its not the bands fault, they just need to avoid the venue like the plague it is.The crowd, the audience, at Barden's, are scum. I don't mean they could do with a wash, should get jobs and stop swearing at buses, I mean purely in the context of audiences at gigs. They only stick around for the one band they want to see in a night, they talk loudly through all the bands that play. They drown out the music and not with amusing banter or heckles, just banal meaningless rhubarb.Go there, look around when a band is playing. What do you reckon, 70%, 80% of the crowd don't give a shit? Last night there were three girls stood on a table presumably to get a better view of the stage, but not actually facing the stage, facing each other and their conversation. Sure the guy on the door gets his money, but what's the point of booking bands at all?I like to think I'm not some small-minded, prejudiced bigot. But sometimes I have my doubts and need to reassure myself.So maybe I've just caught bad nights at Barden's, its just fate and coincidence that the bands, the venue and the crowd don't gel.One way to prove it would be if someone said "Hey come to this gigs, the bands sound great and the audience are fabulous, maybe even the beer will be worth what you pay for"But if whoever says that is wrong and the gig is crap, I will respond to every single bit of gig spam they ever leave online. Is it worth it?

  Manc_ill_kid
  Review Date: 05/04/2008 Report review